Back in 2006, California psychologist Madeline Levine sounded the alarm on the damaging effects of overbearing parents in her book The Price of Privilege, which went on to be a New York Times best-seller and (supposedly) spur moms and dads into action.

Six years later, she still sees run-ragged teenagers enter her practice with great grades and self-abuse issues, despondent about their futures and breaking under the pressure to succeed. In her new book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, Ms. Levine likens them to trauma patients and points to harrowing studies that show 17% of Ivy League students are self-mutilators.

What’s been missing from all the overparenting hand-wringing thus far, she told the Post’s Sarah Boesveld from her office in Marin County this week, has been solutions. A successful child is one that knows his or her own mind, who has coping skills, who is aware of and can act on his or her values, she said — not the one who gets the most university acceptance letters.

“Admiring our children may temporarily lift our sense of self-esteem, but it isn’t doing much for a child’s sense of self,” he says. “Empty praise is as bad as thoughtless criticism — it expresses indifference to the child’s feelings and thoughts.”

Grosz says to avoid praise and instead he suggests using phrases that let children know their efforts are worthwhile.

In his research, Grosz cites an experiment conducted by psychologists Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller at Columbia University.

Grosz says to avoid praise and instead he suggests using phrases that let children know their efforts are worthwhile

Dweck and Mueller asked 128 pupils aged 10 to 11 to solve maths problems. Afterwards, one group was told: “You did really well — you’re so clever,” while others were told: “You did really well — you must have tried really hard.”

Both groups of children were then given more difficult questions. Researchers found that the children who were told they were clever didn’t do as well as the others on the harder examination. The “clever” children even tried to mislead about their test results when asked about the exercise.

In it, Grosz recounts picking up his own daughter from a nursery near their home in North London, he heard an assistant tell her: “You’ve drawn the most beautiful tree. Well done.”

A few days later, she created another drawing and the same assistant said: “Wow, you really are an artist.”

Grosz writes: “My heart sank. How could I explain to the nursery assistant that I would prefer it if she didn’t praise my daughter?”

‘The goal, which is very, very hard to do, is to listen to children’

He added: “If you go to the local nursery you’ll hear this kind of stuff sometimes mixed in with teaching: ‘‘Oh, your drawing looks so like a Miro, darling’’ [the Spanish painter and sculptor]. And so you get this mix of praise and teaching. I find it, to be blunt and aggressive, because it’s saying: ‘I don’t want to engage with you as a person; I want to just praise you.’”

“The goal, which is very, very hard to do, is to listen to children.”

Grosz goes on to write that this type of boost is common because many adults are drawing on experiences of being heavily criticized by their parents while growing up. So, not wanting to repeat the mistakes of their own childhoods, they tend to shower children with praise to show how different their parenting style is from their parents’.

Of course, parents still want to encourage their progeny to success. So what kind of language or conversation works best? It’s all rather simple, according to Grosz, and requires some frankness and honesty.

“Just listen to what your child wants to tell you,” he says, “about what they’re interested in and what they’re passionate about.”